


it ain't me

by bleepblorp



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Issues, Gen, Introspection, Lack of Communication, Not A Fix-It, Road Trips, Sam Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, author is plagued by run on sentences, barely, bc i am mad at him, canon typical theft, dean is an asshole in this, let's call it a style choice, season 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleepblorp/pseuds/bleepblorp
Summary: Dean may have John’s clipped tone and squared shoulders, but Sam was ultimately the one who took his kid and ran with no explanation.In other words: a combination "am I becoming my father" panic/kidnapping/family road trip.
Relationships: Jack Kline & Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	it ain't me

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot stress enough that Dean is an asshole in this, for the brief time he shows up
> 
> Title from fortunate son by ccr bc I have A Thing about anti war songs being referenced and sometimes even PLAYED on supernatural: post 9/11 propaganda, and also this song specifically wrt sam and also. its an spn fic ofc I'm gonna give it a classic rock title

The screen lights up again and Sam’s hand wavers. He doesn’t pick up. Doesn’t know what he’d say.

 _I’ll come back, I always come back. I just need time. I can fix this._ A babble of reassurances he’s not even sure he believes.

He’s learned his lesson. He doesn’t listen to the voicemail when the little green notification light starts blinking, unavoidable and constant in the dark car. Insistent. He has a pretty good idea of what Dean would have to say, anyway.

_You’ve gone behind my back run away before, and someone dies every time. So this time I will find you first, or you will come crawling back when everything goes wrong, just like you always do._

He doesn’t doubt that Dean loves him, but in Dean’s eyes Sam is always either an incompetent or a monster, Dean’s burden, a liability. A timebomb that is Dean’s responsibility to defuse, contain. Even if it’s not conscious, every mistake Sam makes seems to reinforce this belief.

Dean wouldn’t kill Sam, given every reason and opportunity, but that hasn’t extended to any other monster they’ve encountered and it won’t extend to Jack and Sam can’t play human shield all the time.

He has to believe this isn’t a mistake.

Hearing Dean talk that way, using the same tone, the same words, the same squared off shoulders, has made the angry teenager Sam thought he had buried long ago well up underneath the years and years and other bullshit that simultaneously tamped him down and fed him, let him fester, rise to the surface. And that scared, furious kid had always been a heartbeat away from fight or flight.

He can’t fight Dean, not like this, so he runs.

This is not the first time he's run. This time needs to be different. He needs to be strong enough (blood. That’s always the first solution, the one his mind flashes to when he’s scared, helpless desperate. But not a possibility, not an option there has to be another way).

He pulls into a gas station along the lonely road. His mind whirls. If he fills up the tank this will be the last time he does so. Dean will trace the credit card, he’ll have to start stealing cars soon after this, ditch this one as soon as he hits civilization.

Without counting how much cash he has on hand (one thing at a time) he passes a twenty to Jack and tells him: “Get some snacks.”

The kid stares at the money, dubiously but obeys, stepping out of the car and into the halo of light spilling from the gas station interior. Sam watches him go and lets his forehead rest against the steering wheel.

He fills up the tank, a flashing red count down burning behind his eyes the moment he swipes the credit card, blinking down the seconds in time with the pulse of gas oozing through the hose by his ear.

His fingers hover over the phone a moment too long before he taps the call icon.

“ _Sam?_ ”

“Hey Jody, I need help with something if you’ve got a moment.”

The sound of shuffling, and a click. “ _Of course. What can I do you for?_ ”

He pauses. He doesn’t know what to ask, what to say. I don’t know how to do this and you raised a son, right? You’re raising daughters? Ones whose wellbeing relies on you and you must be so scared you’re going to fuck them up how do I not fuck him up? I’m not Lucifer and I’m not my dad, but that’s all I have going for me. And I may as well be a heartbeat away from being my dad, I _have_ been Lucifer. How do I do this? How.

“Never mind, this was stupid,” he says aloud.

“ _Sam,_ ” Jody says, suddenly wary. “ _Sam what’s wrong, where’s Dean?_ ”

“Everything is fine,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “I’m fine, Dean is fine. Sorry I panicked but I’m sure we can figure this out. Thanks.” He hangs up on her protests and smashes the phone under his heel.

Point of no return.

He replaces the nozzle in the holster and closes up the gas tank just as Jack returns with an armful of candy.

Sam winces. He should have expected that he supposes.

He gets back into the car and drives, Jack is in the passenger seat, staring at the sour gummy worms like they are an enigma. He likes sweet, Sam remembers. He wonders if the pain of sour is going to surprise him and then he thinks of the tattoo and Jack’s reaction to pain, relatively low on a Winchester scale, and his heart begins to pound and his vision goes blurry. How is he supposed to keep Jack from ever getting hurt? How does any parent keep their kid from getting hurt? He almost wants to call Jody again, to ask her, but he knows that would be cruel. And pointless, because he already knows the answer.

Jack has already eaten five gummy worms and the world has not ended, Sam breathes. Small victories.

“Do you need to sleep?” He asks. He really doesn’t know, he thinks he’s seen Jack sleep but he doesn’t know if that’s a mirror, something he thinks he is supposed to do, or if he actually needs it.

“I’m not tired,” Jack says, but he sounds off.

Sam takes another deep breath, trying to force his heartrate slow and his voice even. He knows. Knows that kids are intuitive, knows from experience that an angry, scared, sad adult can cause a kid to shrink in on themselves, especially a kid that’s already been threatened. Jack’s so young, how can he keep forgetting how young he is? Violence and grief has been all he knows, he’s most likely been scared the whole time he’s been alive, and Sam is about to give him a life on the run, on the move, tinged by fear and his heart aches, his chest going tight.

Start small. He needs to take care of Jack’s safety first, he can worry about the future later.

He wonders if that was how his father thought, with two scared lonely children in the back seat, and he almost drives off the road.

Deep breath. He fights the urge to take his own pulse and says: “Why don’t you try to get some sleep okay? When you wake up we’ll get you some real food, so think about something you really want to try and we’ll see if we can find it okay?”

“Okay.”

“Something other than candy, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jack closes his eyes and Sam tries to tell if he’s actually sleeping or just doing what Sam wants him to do.

Sam drives, and he hums, it’s mostly nonsense, but it calms him and he hopes that means it calms Jack.

He drives almost aimlessly, just trying to put distance between himself and the homing beacon of his credit card usage back in Kansas. And, as promised pulls into a diner when the sky begins to turn pink.

The gravel parking lot is mostly empty and Sam steps out of the car, to stretch his legs and think. Give Jack a few more moments of precious sleep. He pauses his lap around the lot, and stands in front of a lonely, dusty payphone.

He tries to think of someone, anyone he could possibly call. Hunters as a general rule don’t know much about kids and if they knew what Jack was it would only put him in more danger. Most of them have probably already been contacted by Dean anyway, and are ready to report back with a location, a clue. He thinks about what he would do, to find Dean, what he has done, and a phone call can be damning.

He picks up the receiver, heavy and a little sticky in his hand.

He wishes Bobby were alive, but he knows that even if he were, he wouldn’t call him. Thinks about anyone he has run to in the past and how they either ended up dead because of him or stabbed him in the back or _both_. He realizes what he really wants is his mom, the most primal and oldest want, something he never thought he’d have and now never will again.

He drops his forehead against the receiver and listens to the dial tone in his ear and, almost automatically, he prays, but he flinches away from even that, even now, even with Lucifer literal worlds away, his hands shaking with fury and his hands cold with loss and his hands curling in on themselves with fear, that his last, most private refuge, something that he had hidden even from Dean for so long, has been taken from him.

Besides.

Cas is dead anyway.

He straightens, he hangs up the phone and he walks back to the car, opening the side door and gently shaking Jack’s shoulder. His eyes open seamlessly, as though he weren’t really asleep.

“Hey,” Sam says, softly anyway as though Jack were looking up at him with sleep bleary eyes. “Hey you hungry? I found a diner and you can order anything you want to try, okay?”

“Okay," Jack agrees, and Sam flinches. Has that been the only word out of him since they started driving? Nothing but a litany of agreement and reassurance? What has he done, was this a mistake? Was Jack better off with the safety and stability of the bunker, even though Dean was there? Even though it was clearly so damaging emotionally? Sam wanted freedom over safety his whole life but despite everything this child is _not_ him, and, realistically, he doesn’t know what is best for him.

Dean may have John’s clipped tone and squared shoulders, but Sam was ultimately the one who took his kid and ran with no explanation.

Reckless, still, even after all these years he doesn’t think, he moves first thinks later and that has been his downfall, going with his instinct, his heart, and it has failed him every time, he cannot be trusted why is he _doing_ this?

He claps a hand on Jack’s shoulder as they walk to the diner.

The clientele is sparse and predictable, a handful of truckers, looking tired or wired or both, drinking coffee in front of empty plates as though staving off the inevitable return to the road, and a pair of clearly still-drunk teenagers, taking up what lack of small town plains nightlife has to offer in the corner booth.

They are gestured to any of the many empty tables.

They sit down across from each other and Jack stares at his menu, his brow furrowed. He picks it up a heartbeat after Sam does and reads it with a determined focus.

Sam’s hands twitch. He reaches for the tray of sugar packets and begins arranging them but color, just for something to do. Then he dumps them out and does it again.

Jack watches, rapt. Sam is full of nervous energy, but this helps, and, remarkably, the visual display doesn’t make _Jack_ nervous.

Sam is not sure he can stomach anything so he gets a coffee and then after a beat the first salad on the list because if Jack is just mimicking him then he should at least try to be a good role model.

Jack orders chicken nuggets and after a thought Sam also orders a PB&J. It’s almost all off the kid’s menu, and it's definitely not breakfast food, but the waitress says nothing.

“Cas,” Sam says, passing the thin, pale sandwich alone on the plate over to Jack, who handles it gently, almost reverently, so careful with his motions. That looks familiar, the careful, controlled movements, and Sam hunches his shoulders in sympathy. “Um, your father, Castiel. When he was human this was something special to him.”

Sam didn’t know Kelly, isn’t sure he could reliably tell Jack one thing about her (other than the fact that she had been sleeping with the President, which. Yeah.) but Sam _had_ known Cas (knows Lucifer too, better than anyone ever has and ever will). This is something he can give Jack who lost both parents before he was even born. A gift, in the way John would play them Mary’s favorite song to lull them to sleep, and not in the way he’d blamed Sam for her death. Not in the way Dean was still blaming Jack for Cas’s death.

Jack takes triangular half of the sandwich in his hands and takes a hesitant bite. He chews, slowly, like he is still figuring out the mechanics of it and he smiles, a gesture not mechanical, not a mimic. It can’t be, Sam’s not sure how much smiling the kid had seen in the short time he’s been alive.

Sam smiles back. Maybe he can change that.

He eats, tasting nothing. He’s a little worried Jack is going to ask, because he has no answers. He doesn’t know where they’re going doesn’t know what they’re going to do next, except put as much distance between them and Lebanon Kansas as they can. But Jack seems content with silence for now.

Sam has the strongest urge to explain himself, anyway, but doesn’t know where to start.

He knows intellectually that he will need sleep soon, but he doesn’t feel it, has no connection to the burn behind his eyes beyond the clinical recognition.

He doesn’t need an explanation he needs a plan.

Dean will cool off. He has to. Dean found something to love about Sam when he was at his most monstrous (he doesn’t think about the voicemail, he doesn’t think about the times that Dean almost threatened to kill him indirectly wished him dead). Sam can fix this.

He pays, cash, and drives due west, as far as the tank of gas will take him.

* * *

Once they hit Denver he steals a cobalt blue acura, circa 1995.

It’s shitty enough that it will fly under the radar and flashy enough to belie Dean’s assumptions about his patterns.

Besides: old, front wheel drive sedans get stolen with staggering regularity in a city this size.

He finds himself explaining the why of it to Jack, the drag racing community’s affinity for them (lightweight, easy to steal, easy to drop a high powered engine in them), as they head north toward the empty expanse of Wyoming, the wide open plains to their right and the imposing jut of the Rockies to their left.

“Modern cars are basically impossible to hotwire,” he says. “The way we do it, at least. I could teach you, if you wanted.”

He winces. He is trying to fix this, to prove to Dean that Jack can be good and this is his first move?

He thinks of warm, sticky afternoons under the steering wheel of junker after junker in Bobby’s lot, his head bent close to Dean’s as Dean worked a screwdriver into a seam, busting the panel open then handing it to him, eye watchful and patient as Sam practiced over and over until Dean was satisfied. Long hours under the hood trying to figure what made ‘em tick. The lemonade, after, sweating between his oil stained palms as Dean tried to weasel a beer out of Bobby. Dean’s grin wide and all useless charm, Bobby’s mouth stern and eyes soft.

The Winchester version of the Halcyon days of childhood.

* * *

The acura gets them a little past Cheyenne, and Sam gives in to the burning behind his eyes and gets a motel room for the night.

He sleeps a few hours while the sun is still up and then spends the rest of the night lying awake in the bed closer to the door, with one hand under his pillow wrapped tightly around the handle of his pistol.

And he waits.

* * *

Waste of a cheap motel room.

* * *

Being out of the car and on a horizontal surface did, if nothing else, ease the tension in his back, and now, sitting in the rigidly upright driver’s seat of a powder blue Jeep Cherokee, his shoulders feel looser than they have in the past 48 hours.

Jack seems looser as well, fidgeting in his seat and futzing with the radio stations with a wrinkle between his brows that speaks to a deep focus.

It is a vast improvement over the silent stillness of that first night and Sam feels the corners of his mouth, pulled in tight with worry, begin to ease slightly.

Sam is impressed at how easily he seems to have adjusted.

“Most of these songs speak of God,” Jack says.

“Yeah,” Sam responds, his exhale tangled up with a chuckle. “Yeah, out here you’re mostly going to get country and evangelical channels. It’s a staple across America, but in cities you tend to at least get a bit more variety. If you keep going you might find the classic rock channel. There’s usually at least one.”

Jack twists the dial slightly. “Dean likes classic rock.”

Sam’s stomach tightens. It is said with no fear, no bitterness, no sadness, just the curious, flat affect of a child, the statement of objective truth. A tenet of his small world.

“He does,” Sam responds, and his voice doesn’t waver. “Yeah.”

“Do you?” Jack looks up at him, the wrinkle between his brow smoothed into something else.

Sam wrings his hands around the steering wheel for a moment. “I mean… I have a lot of good memories associated with it.”

Jack nods, satisfied and turns the dial once more, looking up at Sam with a wide grin, growing by the second, as the familiar three chords sing out of the crackly speakers. “Tell me about them?” He asks, hopeful.

So Sam does. He’s hesitant at first, but when Jack doesn’t flinch away from Dean’s name, he allows himself to look back out at the pin straight highway before him and lets himself remember.

* * *

The I-80 corridor is nightmarishly dull.

Dean has railed against it time and time again. Dean, whose very being is tied into every stretch of interstate and every backwoods highway from Maine to Santa Monica, avoids taking I-80 through Wyoming at any cost, even when it’s the clearest shot to their final destination.

_Sammy that place consumes your soul. It’s like a friggin’ time loop, it never ends._

It was the road that Sam had taken to California.

Desolate as it may be, it was still an interstate and he was more likely to get picked up there than on any of the mountain backroads that Dean favored.

And, perhaps, some superstitious part of him thought that Dean would not haunt him here.

It didn’t work then, though Dean hadn’t followed him the specter of his disappointment and furious hurt hung over Sam like his own personal raincloud, and it isn’t going to work now.

* * *

It rains on them in Utah, overnight as they sleep in the cramped cabin of the truck they found with the keys still in the ignition, pulled a little ways off the road over reddish dirt and yellow-brown scrub.

Torrential rain that beats the roof of the car deafeningly. Rain that the red earth sucks up like it’s starved for it.

Jack loses a shoe stepping out of the car first thing the next morning.

His foot sinks, startlingly fast, and he pulls back with a yelp, his socked foot returning up into the truck alone.

Cautiously, he sets his other foot down and leans down to grab is boot. He overbalances and hits the ground, landing on his knees into the oozing give of the mud.

Sam can’t help himself, and laughs.

Jack stands and turns to him, and he wants to feel guilty about the pathetic image Jack cuts across the empty horizon, missing one shoe, his knees stained with the reddish mud, but then he sees Jack’s confusion break into a small smile and the laugh begins anew.

Jack bends down and pulls the boot out, with a _squelch_ and an inch thick coating of mud.

The sound alone is enough to make Sam snort, an ugly, unintentional sound that makes Jack beam.

So he puts his boot back on, balanced precariously on one foot, and sticks it back in the mud, removing it and stomping back down again and again, like a kid splashing in a rain puddle until his foot comes free again unexpectedly and he soars backward with sudden momentum.

He falls, his arms out on either side of him, not flailing for balance, unafraid of the ground. That, or simply so sure he will be caught.

Sam does. Catch him that is. Or he tries to, lunging across the front seat to grasp at the front of Jack’s shirt.

He gets a wrenched shoulder and his elbow smacked hard against the frame of the door for his trouble.

Jack, who landed on his back, sits upright, his legs straight out in front of him and wiggles his toes.

He looks up at Sam, and Sam, still prone across the front seat and clutching his elbow, feels his heart lurch, worries that he’s going to burst into tears, but instead he seems to recede into himself for a moment, his face going utterly still.

He stands up and Sam pushes himself upright to let Jack back into the car. He leans over to yank his boots out of the mud for good this time, and Sam’s hand hovers over his hunched back, prepared for another fall.

Once he’s settled, Sam reaches over and does his best to wipe the mud off his face, Jack obediently tilting it upward to be cleaned, but the rest of him remains _covered,_ so he gives up after a moment with one last, tiny huff of laughter.

“We need to get you in a shower,” he says, and starts the car.

* * *

They don’t hit an available motel until that night, anything even remotely nearby the parks has been booked up for weeks now. _Fuckin’ tourists,_ the little voice that sounds an awful lot like Dean mutters in the back of Sam’s skull.

“You guys have fun today?” The receptionist asks as Sam books the room, eyeing the mud spattered truck out front and Jack, his brand new, gas station outfit of swim trunks, flip-flops and a bootleg commemorative t-shirt that reads _Zion National Perk_ in black print across the chest, still covered in a thin coating of dirt along his back. Despite Sam’s best efforts, the drying mud had gotten _everywhere_.

Sam smiles at her. “Sure did.”

She slides a glossy brochure across the desk alongside the room key and it takes Sam a moment to process what it is.

“We’ve got some great spots for off-roading around here,” she explains in response to his blank stare. “Enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks for all your help,” he says, automatically and takes the key and the brochure, and ushers Jack, who is curiously examining the coffee maker in the corner, outside.

It's been a minute since he’s been confused for a tourist, and he wonders what is different this time, what about his current appearance, the two day scruff and sweat-stained clothes and dark circles under his eyes, screams _leisure_.

* * *

Sam steps out of the shower to find Jack, clad in a scratchy motel robe, sprawled across his bed, scanning the brochure with a furrowed brow.

“You ready to clean your clothes?” Sam asks, watching him out of the corner of his eye as he rubs his hair vigorously with the towel.

Jack nods and hops off the bed.

As it turns out, bargain brand bar soap is no match for the dirt, and no matter how much Sam scrubs at it or how many ruddy suds Jack cups in his hands and blows into the air, the red stains will not come out.

Eventually, Sam plugs up the sink and leaves them to soak, a tried and true method, to cool his temper if not actually help remove stains.

“Can I ask a question?” Jack asks, poking at the pant leg bobbing up to the surface until it goes back under, then again as it makes its way back up.

Sam, stomach clenching, still has no answers. “Of course Jack,” he says, bumping Jack's shoulder with his. “What do you wanna know?”

“Why is the dirt here red?” Jack asks. “Why isn’t our dirt at home red? Does dirt come in other colors?”

“Um,” Sam starts. Something tickles the back of his mind, like he should know the answers, like he took a geology class for a science credit, but nothing comes up when he scratches at it. “That’s a really good question.”

Jack perks up at that, like it’s a real compliment, and that makes Sam’s chest ache.

He pats Jack’s shoulder. “How about we figure it out together while these soak, yeah?”

“Okay,” Jack agrees and, unprompted, fetches Sam’s laptop and brings it to the table in the corner.

* * *

That night, while Jack sleeps, Sam wracks his brain for an alias he has never used before

They’ve gotten lucky up until now but sooner or later, he’s going to run out of cash, or a motel is going to require a credit card. He doesn’t want to rope Jack into a con, bring him along to some seedy bar, but he also doesn’t want to leave him alone. Imagines Dean finding Jack, alone in some motel room, attached to a too-obvious alias, while Sam is on the other side of town, imagines coming back to—

Pain throbs between his eyes.

 _You chose this_ , he reminds himself. _You ran away. Again._

He picks one almost at random, hopes it even sounds like a real name, and tries to sleep off the beginnings of the headache.

His last thought before drifting off is that Jack referred to Kansas as home.

* * *

He decides to fill up the tank of the truck one more time before ditching it.

It’s been good to them, but it is recognizable and he’s already had it for over 24 hours.

His eyes catch on the local newspaper as he hands over the cash to put on the pump.

“Actually,” he says and the cashier’s hands stall irritably as he drops the paper on the counter. “Could I take this too?”

The desert sun beats down on the back of his neck as he hunches over the paper while the tank fills, his chest going tight even as his stomach goes heavy.

He doesn’t know why he bought it.

Habit, probably. He remembers having to avoid even looking at the news for months once he got to Stanford, having to keep his head low any time someone mentioned some gruesome story or piece of campus lore, like the girl who haunted the theater building or the exchange student who had died in the dormitory basement two years ago.

They don’t have _time_. He doesn’t have any of his fake IDs, hasn’t had time to make new ones. He only has a handful of weapons and no backup.

He tucks the newspaper in his back pocket and ducks his head into the open window. “Hey.”

Jack looks up from what he’s reading. The brochure again, starting to look worn between Jack's fingers.

“You okay out here for a minute?” He asks. “I have to make a call.”

Jack nods solemnly. “I will keep an eye on things.”

Sam grins at him and goes back inside.

“Hey,” he calls to the cashier, softening his eyes and drawing his brows together. “Can I use your phone? I meant to check in with my wife this morning, but I lost my phone. She must be losing her mind with worry.”

He smiles when he hears the clipped _“Mills_ ” through the receiver.

“It’s good to hear your voice, Jody.”

“ _Sam._ ” Her voice is too careful when she says his name. “ _Good to know you’re alive._ ”

She doesn’t say Dean’s name, but she doesn’t have to. His mouth twists. “Likewise.” Then: “Hey, you or Donna have a spare moment to check out a potential job in Utah?”

* * *

“Can I ask a question?”

“You just did,” Sam says, eyes on the road. Then belatedly: “Always.”

“Why do people do off-roading for fun?”

Sam blinks, thinking of the brochure that had somehow stuck around. “I’m not sure, exactly. Some people get really into the community of it, like to show off their cars and talk shop about the modifications they’ve done. It’s an excuse to get outside while still having the comfort of your own space. Some people just like driving.”

“Like Dean.” Jack says it confidently, like he has a bedrock understanding of Dean as a person.

“Well,” Sam says, his hands convulsing on the steering wheel. "Dean isn’t exactly what I would call an outdoorsman, but yeah. Sure.”

Jack nods. “Why?”

Sam glances at him briefly, before turning back to look at the road. “Why?” He prompts.

“Why does Dean like driving?”

Several possible answers tangle up together in Sam’s throat. _Because he’s a control freak and this way he alone commands the direction of his whole world,_ or: _it’s the closest humanity comes to flying,_ or: _it’s home, to us. We don’t know how else to live. Some of the best days of my life were in the passenger seat of that car._

Instead, he pulls over and parks the truck on the side of the road and raises his eyebrows at Jack, who only looks more confused. “Wanna figure it out for yourself?” He asks, dangling the keys out between them in an obvious invitation, and his heart warms at the dawning realization on Jack’s face, the way he bounces just a little bit in his seat in excitement.

* * *

Dean finds him, because Dean always finds him, in a low brown motel in northern Arizona, only a handful of miles from the northern rim of the Grand Canyon.

Some, small, stupid, still-hopeful part of him wanted to take Jack there, like a real family road trip and not whatever this was. It's like this passing fancy cursed him, like the potential for just a moment of normalcy brought reality back down on his head.

Calling Jody was a mistake. He can’t bring himself to regret it because otherwise people might have died, but if keeping Jack safe was his only priority, he might not have done it.

(Hunters, as a general rule, make shitty parents.)

The only thing he can do now is get between the upraised gun and Jack. The bullets won’t do anything. It’s a scare tactic, something to cow what is essentially just a scared kid. And Sam, he can be a shield.

“Dean, wait, I can fix this,” he says. Wants to say: _I will get between him and anything that the world throws at him and that includes you._

“Get out of the way Sammy,” Dean says and Sam flinches at hearing that name in such a cold tone. There is no sadness or desperation in Dean, just the cool ruthlessness of a man who will do whatever needs to be done. He is not begging Sam to move. He wants Sam to believe he will pull the trigger.

Despite everything, Sam doesn’t.

“You’ll have to make me.”

Dean’s icy facade cracks, frustration showing. This is oddly reassuring to Sam. He can work with frustration, he can work with an angry Dean.

“Don’t you see what’s happening?” Dean demands, gun wavering as he gesticulates. Sam’s heart pounds even as he recognizes it for what it is: a chink in the armor. “He’s controlling you, just like he controlled Cas. What did he promise you? That he’d bring Mom back? She’s _dead_ , Sam. And _he_ killed her.”

Sam wants to argue that point, wants to reassure Jack, all wide eyes and confused wobble to his mouth, that what happened to Mary and Cas wasn’t his fault. But his head is swimming and all he can see is the barrel of the gun tipping lower to the ground.

“I'll come back," he says. "I always come back. We just need space, that’s all. Time. I can do this. If you don’t have faith in him yet, have faith in _me_.”

Dean is all furious silence and steady hands.

“I know what you think this looks like,” Sam continues. "But this is different. _He_ is different.”

Dean lowers the gun and sighs. Says something under his breath that sounds like _stupid, stubborn son of a bitch,_ then, louder: “I think this is a terrible idea, but fine. Come home and we’ll put this behind us.”

Sam’s hands shake, and he feels powerless. Even though he has, nominally, won this argument, Dean’s hand is still on the gun.

“Let’s go home then,” he says and the words don’t taste as sweet as he always imagined them.

* * *

Sam glances in the rearview mirror, to see Jack, face smushed against the window, his forehead smooth and unburdened. He's still not entirely sure that sleep means the same thing for Jack as the rest of humanity, but it's nice to see anyway.

He fiddles with a loose thread on his sleeve and, without looking up from it, he tells Dean: “I know what you told me was bullshit.”

Dean, lounging back in the driver’s seat, sniffs, and shifts slightly, his right hand coming to rest possessively on the gearshift. “What are you talking about?”

“Dean,” Sam says. “I _know_ you, better than you know yourself. I know you’re lying to me, and that’s fine.”

“Is it now,” Dean says, flat and cautious.

“Yes,” Sam says, worsening the weak seam as he tugs at the loose string. He brings it up to his teeth to tear it off as neat as he can manage. “I don’t need you to actually believe Jack is good just yet. But I _do_ need you to know that if you hurt him I will not forgive you.”

“Sammy…”

Sam cuts him off, maybe a little harsh, but he thinks he’s earned the right to be a little snappy. “I know, okay? You think we don’t have a line that can be crossed, that you would, and have forgiven me anything and therefore the reverse must be true. And maybe you’re right, but I’m telling you now: this is my line. You hurt him and we’re done.”

Dean snorts, but there is no humor to his tone when he speaks. “Even if he breaks bad?”

“He won’t. I believe that.”

“Fine, whatever you say.” The tone is indulgent. Dean just wants the conversation to be over, confident that Sam is wrong and will realize that in his own time.

“You don’t believe me,” Sam says, his blood boiling. “That’s fine too, but...”

Silence, harsh and cold against his eardrums. He shivers.

“What?” Dean finally spits out, like venom.

“You can’t lie to me, we’ve established that. But you _have to_ convince him. If he even gets a whiff of an idea that you fear him, if he thinks you think he’s evil, if I _ever_ hear about you threatening him again…” His mind goes blank, doesn’t know how to threaten Dean in any meaningful way. So he doesn’t. “He _has_ to believe that you believe in him as much as I do, okay?” He tries for desperation, which is easy enough. This is his only card left, after all. “He _has_ to, Dean. That’s the only way this works.”

“We can playact a fucking Stepford family if that makes you happy. It doesn’t change anything.”

Sam sinks back into his seat, his hands ice cold and his stomach still churning. It has to be enough, for now. He just needs time. Sam can _fix_ this.


End file.
